a little bit savoury | a whole lot sweet
When organising my best friend’s baby shower, I asked what sweet treats she would like me to make for the day. At the top of the list was macarons and despite my Popcorn and Malteser Macarons being M’s favourite, for her baby shower she asked if it was possible to make some that tasted like one of her favourite lollies.
It just so happened that they were my favourite lolly as well so I set about creating these Pineapple Lolly Macarons.
On a somewhat recent shopping trip I came across some freeze-dried fruit powders from The Melbourne Food Depot at a local store. As I was checking out the different varieties, I spied the passionfruit powder and immediately picked it up as the hubby and I both looooooove passionfruit.
It did take me a little while to get around to using it, which is normally the case for anything, but as I was in the mood to make macarons for some folks we had coming around, and it also turned out to be October’s Daring Bakers challenge, I decided to grab the powder and an extra ingredient, to make Popping Passionfruit Macarons.
Usually when I have bananas that are reaching the end of their life I make banana bread or a banana cake but this time I wanted to do something different. I also was in the mood for making some scrolls and knowing that Sally from Sally’s Baking Addiction has some amazing scrolls (or rolls as they are sometimes called) on her website, a quick search resulted in a recipe which met my needs.
So for your viewing and eating pleasure, I present Banana Chocolate Chip Cinnamon Scrolls.
I had grand illusions of another macaron tower recently with five brightly coloured, different flavour macarons to go with a sprinkle cake I was making. One would be the old favourite of Cherry Ripe Macarons, and the other four brand new ones I have had on my wish list to make.
Well for three of them I made the buttercream, but that was as far as I got, but one did end up with its shells and I am glad they did because I was very happy with how these Jaffa Macarons turned out.
Following the Easter long weekend, the hubby and I took the following week off as well to enjoy a short break. Whilst we went away over Easter, when we returned home we pottered around the house and had a little stay-cation. Of course I had big plans of catching up on the ironing, sorting out some of the kitchen cupboards and cooking a whole bunch of meals to put in the freezer, but alas, none of that eventuated.
The kitchen did end up getting a bit of a workout last weekend so stay tuned to the blog over the next few weeks as there is some deliciousness in store for you my friends.
First on the agenda was a batch of macarons. It has been over six months since my last macaron post, and on this occasion I thought I would whip up a batch of simple, but very tasty, Chocolate Macarons.
After making my first ever batch of crème pâtissière, I obviously needed something to use it for. My first thought was to make my own version of the toffee choux pastries from our local patisserie which is a favourite of the hubby and I, but I decided I didn’t want to play around with hot sugar on this particular occasion so that idea was scrapped. I did want to stick with making choux pastry as I haven’t made it for quite some time so I settled on making éclairs instead.
I believe I have mentioned once or twice my dislike of fondant and the hubby especially hates it. But as it is pretty regularly used in the cake decorating world I need to suck it up and find something that I actually am happy working with and that I actually like eating.
My friend Chuy from Chuy’s Cakes (you may have noticed the link on the right hand side to her blog, but you can also check her out on Facebook – her Farm Cake is one of my favourites) told me ages ago that she makes her own marshmallow fondant so I finally got around to searching the interweb for a recipe to try. You can’t rush these things.
Last, but by no means least, of the flavours made for the 30th birthday macaron tower were the Cherry Ripe Macarons as chosen by C. When I found out that this was C’s flavour and I can honestly say it was something I wasn’t expecting and was a little bit freaked at first because for whatever reason, I couldn’t recall ever eating a Cherry Ripe before in my life. But I took one for the team and tried a few Cherry Ripes when I was testing out a couple of recipes for the ganache and I can say I am a fan.
Since I first started making the popcorn and malteser macarons, I have had lots of practice at them as they are certainly my most popular variety. It also happened to be one of the first posts on my blog and so some, well the majority, of the photos left a lot to be desired.
Even though I have made them quite a few times since, and have always meant to take some more photos, I never did. When the time came to make the macaron tower I thought I would at least get a couple of new feature photos rather than doing the step by step process again.
One of the most popular flavours around these days is salted caramel. I see it in tarts, biscuits, cupcakes and certainly macarons. So when B requested Salted Caramel Macarons for her part of the 30th birthday macaron tower, I was excited to give it a go.
There are numerous recipes out there for salted caramel macarons, and the one I used was from one of my 100+ cookbooks being Secrets of Macarons by José Maréchal. It is an awesome little book with lots of info on how to make these fiddly little things and I refer to it regularly.
